FreeBSD 5.3; howto migrate from i386 to amd64 mode

[Steve Kargl]

On Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 09:20:40AM +0100, Meyendriesch, Burkard wrote:
> 
> about a year ago I installed 5-CURRENT on my Athlon64 based box (Asus K8V).
> Because at that time amd64 mode didn't work very well with a lot of ports
> I installed FreeBSD in i386 mode. Meanwhile I followed the release path
> to 5.3. Everything works very fine (with i386 mode).
> 
> Now I want to use the full power of my 64 bit CPU. I cross compiled the
> kernel to amd64 mode:
> 
> # cd /usr/src
> # make kernel TARGET=amd64 TARGET_ARCH=amd64 KERNCONF=REINEKE64
> 
> and tried to reboot the machine with the new kernel. The kernel himself
> seems to work but when he tries to mount the root filesystem the system
> hangs. I think something in my migration is wrong.
> 
> Can someone please tell me the correct procedure to get my system work
> in amd64 mode without complete re-installation.
> 

Backup your important data.  Get the amd64 ISO imge of FreeBSD and
burn it to cd.  Insert cd in target machine and boot.  Follow
the instructions.  Restore your important data.

Or read the FreeBSD-amd64 archive for a procedure described
by Peter Wemm on cross-building FreeBSD/amd64 and doing a
temporary install into the swap partition.

-- 
Steve